William Johnson

William Johnson (1715 County Meath, Ireland-July 17, 1774 ) was a British general who fought in the [[French and Indian War with the Thirteen Colonies, responsible for the victory at Lake George in 1758 and other conquests. He died a year before the Revolutionary War began.

Biography
Johnson was born in County Meath, Ireland, which was, at the time, a province of Great Britain. He converted to Protestantism in 1738, and left Ireland to live in the Thirteen Colonies with his uncle Admiral Peter Warren. He became a General in the Colonial Army with the start of the French and Indian War, and he was responsible for the victory at Lake George and the capture of the Ohio Valley forts, all by 1758. Afterwards, he took part in fighting against the Indians, primarily the Iroquois tribes, as Superintendent of Indian Affairs. In 1768, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix caused a peace treaty between the Iroquois and British, but war broke out in 1774 again, in Dunmore's War, and violence continued along the frontier.

In 1773, using his assistant Thomas Hickey's black-market connections, he smuggled tea and made money so that he could purchase Iroquois land and expand the northern Thirteen Colonies westwards. His operation was foiled with the Boston Tea Party, with Paul Revere and William Molineux dumping several chests of tea into the Boston Harbor, and Johnson had to use other means to get enough money for the purchase.